Letter from Lagos

School boys having a kickabout in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2009. Photograph by Teju Cole.

The World Cup is not being hosted by “Africa” but by a country in southern Africa, the Republic of South Africa. Nigeria is not hosting this year’s World Cup, but late last year it hosted FIFA Under-17 World Cup. I watched the Under-17 matches in Lagos with my family. Enthusiasm was slow in building, but once Nigeria progressed in the tournament, people got into it, and you began to see clusters of young men around television sets in cafes and canteens.

The tournament itself was not disastrously organized. Of course, much of the money earmarked for the tournament was stolen by the local organizing committee and members of the government, but matches took place, reasonably officiated, teams in air-conditioned buses beat Lagos traffic and made it to their matches on time, and no Uruguayan or Spaniard fell victim to an elaborate advance-fee scam. As they say, count your blessings.But there are scams and there are scams. Nigerian enthusiasm was tepid for one specific reason: many of us knew that our players were over-age. In fact, just days before the tournament, half of the Golden Eaglets team was dropped when the MRI imaging found that they were well over 17 years old. But the suspicion remained, strengthened by the evidence of our eyes, that the remainder were also men, not boys.

Around the time that the Nigerian team was pummeling Spain in the semi-finals, around the time that local fervor was reaching its highest pitch, a former Super Eagles player, Amiesimaka, came out with the news that Chukwudi Uche was, “at least 25 years old.” Amiesimaka had worked as a coach for a local team, and said, “One of my key players then is the current captain of our so-called Under-17 Golden Eaglets. By his own admission at that time, that is seven years ago, he was 18 years old.” The amazing thing is that he was basically met with one of two reactions: he was insulted, or he was ignored. The tournament went on and, in the final, a very boyish Swiss side defeated the mannish Golden Eaglets 1-0 to win the cup.

By a strange twist of fate, just two days before the Under-17 final, the Super Eagles, after a mediocre campaign, defeated Kenya 3-2 in Nairobi. Combined with Tunisia’s freakish loss in Maputo, the Eagles, after we had given up hope, booked passage to South Africa. But there’s a mood over Nigerian football, and I couldn’t help but notice the restraint in the celebrations that followed qualification. We don’t have the players we used to have, and we don’t have the team we used to have. The team contains only one truly world class player: John Obi Mikel. Part of the problem is that so many of our stars lie about their ages, thirty-two year olds in twenty-two year olds’ clothing, brilliant in youth tournaments, and fatigued on the biggest stage.

While we were watching the Under-17 final, my father said: “The person who steals chickens at night and the one who steals it during the day have one thing in common: they both use the same woven basket.”

Well, what does that mean, dad?

“Nigeria are age cheats,” my father said, “but the Swiss, famous for some of the harshest immigration restrictions in the world, have been generous in giving citizenships to Brazilian, Turkish, Ghanaian and Croatian boys. It’s a scam with documents, the Nigerian one is undocumented. So, who is the real cheat?”

Teju Cole is the author of Every Day is for the Thief, a novella of Lagos. His first novel, Open City, will be published by Random House in 2011.

[Editor’s note: “Letter from Lagos” formed part of Teju Cole’s comments as a panelist at Tuesday’s “Africa’s World Cup” forum at the New School in New York City.]